Monday, September 04, 2017

Mapping Aboriginal Place Names

I linked earlier today to the Muru View application which superimposes the original indigenous place-names of Australian locations on top of Google Maps Street View. That application uses data from historical surveys from the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia. The work recovering the data used in Muru View was undertaken by the State Library of New South Wales.

The library has used this 100 year-old survey data to create their own map showing the location and meaning of Indigenous Australian place names. The Weemala map allows you to browse the surveys and letters of the Anthropological Society of Australasia Survey. Each time you open a survey page or letter in Weemala any indigenous place-names in the text are also geo-located on a Leaflet map. If you click on any of the locations marked on the map you can find out the aboriginal place-name's meaning in English.

You can learn more about how the map was created in this Building Weemala blog post.